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Mavericks of the Mind andVoices from the Edgecontain thought-provokinginterviews by David JayBrown with over forty ofthe leading thinkers of ourtime on the subject ofconsciousness.

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Mavericks ofMedicine:Conversations on theFrontiers of MedicalResearch: Exploringthe Future ofMedicine withAndrew Weil, JackKevorkian, BernieSiegel and RayKurzweil and Others

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Conversations on theEdge of theApocalypse

 

In his latest interviewcollection, David JayBrown has once againgathered some of themost interesting minds oftoday to consider the

From here to Alternity and Beyond

"The explanatory principle will save you from the fear of the unknown. I prefer the unknown..."

with John C. Lilly

 

How does one briefly describe a man as complex as John Lilly? Whole books barelyprovide an overview of this man's extraordinary existence, amazing accomplishments,and contributions to the world. His list of scientific achievements covers a full page InWho's Who in America. John C. Lilly, M.D. is perhaps best known as the man behindthe fictional scientists dramatized in the films Altered states and The Day of theDolphin. He pioneered the original neuroscientific work In electrical brain stimulation,mapping out the pleasure and pain pathways in the brain. He frontiered work in inter-species communication research with dolphins and whales. He invented the isolationtank and did significant research in the area of sensory deprivation.

Educated at CalTech, Dartmouth Medical School, and the University of Pennsylvania,he did a large part of his scientific research at the National Institute of Mental Healthand built his own dolphin-communication research lab in St. Thomas in the VirginIslands. After experimenting with LSD in the sensory deprivation flotation tank, he leftthe academic world in pursuit of ever higher states of consciousness. From the EsalenInstitute to Chile to ketamine-induced extraterrestrial contacts in other realities, thisman's life is more far-out than any science fiction. Always following the scientifictradition that carved his name into history, John Lilly systematically and courageouslyexplored the states of consciousness produced by LSD and ketamine while in theisolation tank. His autobiographies The Center of the Cyclone, The Dyadic Cyclone(with Toni Lilly), and The Scientist, provide mind-boggling overviews of his amazingadventure of a life. His philosophy on how to reprogram one's own brain is bestsummarized in Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer, andSimulations of God.

Rebecca McClen and I interviewed John at his house in Malibu on the night ofFebruary 16, 1991. It was a magically enchanting evening. John was like a Zen master,with sparkling extraterrestrial eyes, in top form, more brilliant than ever at 76,laughing, creating and bursting realities like soap bubbles. John is very direct andruthlessly compassionate, more knowledgeable than a library of encyclopedias yet asinnocent and curious as a small child. The interview lasted over four hours. John spokeenthusiastically to us about how his early scientific research influenced his latterexplorations in consciousness, from dolphins to extraterrestrials. He spoke to us aboutthe distinction between insanity and outsanity, and about ECCO-- the EarthCoincidence Control Office. We discussed and shared our ketamine experiencestogether. He discussed his ideas about how ketamine makes the brain sensitive tomicro-waves, so that it can directly pick up television and radio signals. Fromelectrical brain stimulation to interspecies communication to sensory deprivation topsychedelic exploration, John Lilly is a pure delight to be around

 

future of the human race,the mystery ofconsciousness, theevolution of technology,psychic phenomena, andmore. The book includesconversations withcelebrated visionaries andinspirational figures suchas Ram Dass, NoamChomsky, DeepakChopra, and GeorgeCarlin. Part scientificexploration, partphilosophical speculation,and part intellectualrollercoaster, the free-formdiscussions are originaland captivating, and offersurprising revelations.Conversations on theEdge of the Apocalpyse isa new look into the mindsof some of ourgroundbreaking leadersand is the perfect gift forscience fiction andphilosophy fans alike.

 

 

 

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DJB

 

DJB: John, what was it that originally inspired your interest in neuroscience and thenature of reality?

JOHN: At age sixteen, in my prep school, I wrote an article for the school papercalled "Reality," and that laid out the trip for the rest of my life--thought versus brainactivity and brain structure. I went to CalTech to study the biological sciences, andthere I took my first course in neuroanatomy. Later I went on to Dartmouth MedicalSchool where I took another course in neuroanatomy, and at the University ofPennsylvania I studied the brain even further. So I learned more about the brain than Ican tell you.

RMN: In what ways do you think your Catholic background influenced your mysticalexperiences?

JOHN: At Catholic school I learned about tough boys and beautiful girls. I fell in lovewith Margaret Vance, never told her, though, and it was incredible. I didn't understandabout sex so I visualized exchanging urine with her. My father had one of theseexercise machines with a belt worn around your belly or rump and a powerful electricmotor to make the belt vibrate. I was on this machine and all the vibration stimulatedmy erogenous zones. Suddenly my body fell apart and my whole being wasenraptured. It was incredible.

I went to confession the following morning and the priest said, "Do you jack off!." Ididn't know what he meant, then suddenly I did and I said, "No." He called it a mortalsin. I left the church thinking, "If they're going to call a gift from God a mortal sin,then to hell with them. That isn't my God, they're just trying to control people."

RMN: What is your personal understanding of God?

JOHN: When I was Seven years old I had a vision alone in a Catholic church.Suddenly I saw God on his throne: an old man with a white beard and white hairsurrounded by angels and the saints parading around with a lot of music. I made themistake of asking a nun about the vision and she said, "Only saints have visions!" Iassumed that she thought I wasn't a saint.

So I kept that memory, and on my first acid trip I relived it completely to Beethoven'sNinth Symphony. And suddenly I realized that the little boy had constructed this toexplain the experience he had. I realized that one has to project onto an experience ifone is going to talk about it because the experience itself can't be said in words. But ifyou are going to talk about it you choose words which you feel are most appropriate. Iunderstood that, as a seven year old I had done that. I saw an old man with white hairbecause the pre-programming was there. It wasn't physiology; it was something inside,the inner reality.

RMN: Has your understanding or idea of God evolved over time as a result of yourchanging experiences?

JOHN: Well, when I started going out on the universe with LSD in the tank, I'd cometo a certain group of entities and I'd say, "Are you God?" And they'd say, "Well, wesay that to some people but God is way up there somewhere with the angels." And itturned out no matter how big they were, God is bigger. So finally I got to theStarmaker. But as Olaf Stapledon says in his book, it's impossible to describe theStarmaker in human terms. He was well aware of the bullshit of language.

I call God ECCO now. The Earth Coincidence Control Office. It's much moresatisfying to call it that. A lot of people accept this and they don't know that they'rejust talking about God. I finally found a God that was big enough. As the astronomersaid to the Minister, "My God's astronomical." The Minister said, "How can you relateto something so big?" The astronomer said, "Well, that isn't the problem, your God'stoo small!"

DJB: Do you think that the concept of objectivity is valuable, or do you think thatseparating the experimenter from the experiment is impossible?

JOHN: Objectivity and subjectivity were traps that people fell into. I prefer the terms"insanity" and "outsanity." Insanity is your life inside yourself. It's very private andyou don't allow anybody in there because it's so crazy. Every so often I find somebodythat I can talk to about it. When you go into the isolation tank outsanity is gone. Now,outsanity is what we're doing now, it's exchanging thoughts and so on. I'm not talkingabout my insanity and you're not talking about yours. Now, if our insanities overlapthen we can be friends.

DJB: How would you define what a hallucination is?

JOHN: That's a word I never use because it's very disconcerting, part of theexplanatory principle and hence not useful. Richard Feynmen, the physicist, went intothe tank here twelve times. He did three hours each time and when he finished he sentme one of his physics books in which he had inscribed, "Thanks for thehallucinations."

So I called him up and I said, "Look, Dick, you're not being a scientist. What youexperience you must describe and not throw into the wastebasket called"hallucination." That's a psychiatric misnomer; none of that is unreal that youexperienced." For instance he talks: about his nose when he was in the tank. His nosemigrated down to his buttonhole, and finally he decided that he didn't need abuttonhole or a nose so he took off into outer space.

DJB: And he called that a hallucination because he couldn't develop a model toexplain it?

JOHN: But you don't have to explain it, you see. You just describe it. Explanationsare: worthless in this area.

RMN: How do you feel about the role that discipline has to play in the process ofself-discovery?

JOHN: It's absolutely essential. I had thirty-five years of school, eight years ofpsychoanalysis before even going into the tank. So I was freer than I would have beenhad I not had all that. Everybody could say, "Well, that was dissonant," and I wouldsay, "Yes, but I learned what I don't have to know." I learned all the bullshit that's putout in the academic world and I would bullshit too. This bullshit is an insurance that Idon't remember the bullshit that the professor says, except that which is reallyworthwhile and interesting.

RMN: What guidelines do you use when traveling through innerspace?

JOHN: My major guideline when I go in the tank is, for God's sake don't preprogram,don't have a purpose, let it happen. With ketamine and LSD I did the same thing; Islowly let go of controlling the experience. You know some people lie in the tank foran hour trying to experience what I experienced. Finally I wrote an introduction to TheDeep Self, and said, if you really want to experience what it is to be in the tank, don'tread any of my books, don't listen to me, just go in there and be.

RMN: So you don't ever try and go in with a mission or an idea of what you want toaccomplish?

JOHN: Why should I? I'd only have gotten more ridiculous. Every time I took acid inthe tank in St. Thomas it was entirely different. I think that I couldn't even begin todescribe it. I only got 1/10 of 1% of it and I wrote that in books. The universe preventsyou from programming and when they take you out, they tear you wholly loose andyou realize that these are massive intellects, far greater than any human. Then youreally get humble. When you come back here you say, "Oh well, here I am, back inthis damn body again, and I'm not as intelligent as when I was out there with them."

I took an acid trip in the Carlisle Hotel in Washington, near the FBI building. I turnedon the tape recorder and I just lay down on the bed. I was a tight person but it was anincredible trip. They look me out and showed me the luminous colossus, and then theBig Bang that they created three times. And they said, "Man appears here and

disappears there." And I said, "That's awful. What happens to them'!" And they said,"That's us." I went into a deep depression because I didn't identify with that. Then,about a week later, I suddenly realized they're also talking about me. You see all this inthe introduction to The Center of the Cyclone.

DJB: John, let me ask you, how did your earlier inter-species communication researchwith marine mammals influence your later work where you experienced contact withextra-terrestrial or inter-dimensional beings on your psychedelic travels?

JOHN: Let me say how I got to work with dolphins first. I was floating in the tank fora year and wondering, who floats around twenty-four hours a day'? I went to PeteShoreliner and he says, "Dolphins. They're available. Go down to the Marine Studiosin Florida." So I did, and I immediately fell in love with them. Then we killed a coupleof dolphins to get the brains, and when we saw them we said, "Oh boy! This is it. Thisis a brain bigger than ours!" And I thought, this is what I want to do.

Well, I didn't kill any more dolphins. I studied their behavior and interactions. I wasworking alone at Marine Studios and I had a brain electrode in one dolphin, which Iregret immeasurably. Anyway, when I would stimulate the positive reinforcementsystem he would just quietly push the lever and work like mad, and if I stopped hewould vocalize immediately. I knew monkeys wouldn't do that. And if we stimulatedthe negative system he would push the lever, shut it off, and then he'd scold us. See?Then he broke the switch and just jabbered away.

So we then took the tape of this over to a friend of mine's house and his tape machineran at only half the speed of what we had recorded in. It was incredible. Dolphinmaking human sounds. We didn't believe it at first. What he was trying to do was tosay, "I can talk your language, let me talk to your leaders, then we can really get thisstraightened out about positive and negative reinforcement."

So when I got my lab organized in Miami I turned to Ellsbrough and I said, "I'm goingin there to try this with Elvar." So I went and shouted at the dolphin we called Elvar,"Elvar! Squirt water!" He zoomed right back immediately, "Squouraarr rahher." And Isaid, "No. Squirt water." And finally after about ten times, he had it so we couldunderstand it. It was just an amazing experience.

DJB: Do you think that he had an understanding of what he was saying, or do youthink he was just mimicking the sounds?

JOHN: If you're experiencing a foreign language, what do you do?

DJB: Well, the first thing you do is mimic.

JOHN: That's right. And slowly but surely, your phoneme system masters the sounds,right? And it doesn't make any difference whether it makes sense or not. Then the nextthing you have to do is hook the phonemes up and make words. And then you have tohook the words up to make sentences. And then the meaning, the semantic system inyour brain, starts working. So we have to go through all these steps and if you're at allsmart you'll realize that you have to have intensive contact with the other language,with someone who speaks it very well. I learned Swedish that way and that's what wedid with the dolphins.

DJB: Right. So this work with the dolphins, how did it influence your experienceswith ketamine in the isolation tank?

JOHN: Well, I discovered that dolphins have personalities and are valuable people. Ibegan to wonder about whales which have much larger brains, and I wondered whattheir capabilities are.

There's a threshold of brain size for language as we know it, and as far as I can makeout it's about 800 grams. Anybody below that, like the chimpanzee or the gorilla can'tlearn to speak a language. But above that language is: acquired very rapidly, as in ababy. Well, this means that the dolphin's life is probably as complicated as ours. Butwhat about their spiritual life? Can they get out of their bodies and travel? Are theyextraterrestrials? I asked those kinds of questions. Most people wouldn't ask them.

So I took ketamine by the tank at Marine World in Redwood City. I got in to the rank

and I had a microphone near my head and an underwater speaker that went down intothe dolphin tank. My microphone hit their loudspeaker under water. So I waited. ThenI began to feel that I was in direct contact with them and as soon as I felt that one ofthem whistled, a long whistle, and it went from my feet right up to my head. I wentstraight out of my body. They took me to the dolphin group mind. Boy, that was scary!I shouted and carried on. I said, "I can't even handle one dolphin, much less a groupmind of dolphins!"

So instead of that they put me into a whale group mind and when you have anexperience like that, you realize that some of the LSD experiences may have been inthose group minds, not in outer space at all. Since then I suspect that they're all readyto talk and carry on with us if we were not so blind. So we open up pathways to themwith ketamine, with LSD, with swimming with them, with falling in love with themand them falling in love with us. All the non-scientific ways.

RMN: Why did you stop doing the English experiments with the dolphins?

JOHN: Because I didn't want anyone to speak to them. So I did it more esotericallywith ketamine in the tank, and so on, which these idiots in the Navy wouldn't do. I wasappalled by what they were doing.

RMN: Have you ever managed to learn enough of their language to communicate withthem on their level?

JOHN: No, because they're too fast and too high frequency. They're ten times as fastas we are and ten times the frequency. So if you record it on tape and then slow itdown ten times you can get an idea. When they're working on human speech, at firstthey're too fast for you, and then they suddenly realize it so they slow down.

DJB: Have you ever given ketamine to a dolphin?

JOHN: No. I gave them acid to see if it would knock out their respiration. It didn't. Icouldn't understand what was happening to them on LSD except for one thing theydid. They turned around along the tank at the same time, and suddenly they turnedtheir beaks down and turned on their sonar straight downwards. I remember on myfirst acid trip that suddenly the floor disappeared and I saw the stars on the other sideof the earth, so I stamped my foot on the floor to find it. That's what they were doing.

Also, the dolphin Pam had been spear-gunned three limes by Ricco Browny in the"Flipper" series. The first time, Pam went over to Browny and pulled the spear fromhim. The second time, she took one look at him and turned away. The third time sheran like mad and wouldn't go near him or any humans. It was just awful. So when wegot her she was staying away from us with the other dolphins. So I gave her LSD andshe climbed all over us. It was marvelous.

Boy, I've been trying to stop talking about dolphins. I was enslaved by them for twentyyears and now I'm trying to avoid them for a while. But I can't. People like you comeout and remind me of them.

RMN: That's wonderful. Okay, let's get back to people. Could you tell us, in whatways you think the exploration and mapping of the human psyche can help to improvethe quality of people's lives and what about people with mental disorders?

JOHN: Do you know Thomas Szasz's book, The Myth of Mental Illness? Well that'swhere I'm at. I don't believe any of this mental health stuff; it's all bullshit. Havingbeen through psychoanalysis with a doctor of physics, Robert Beltim from Vienna,that's what I've come to think. He used to analyze analysts, Anna Freud and so on. Istarted quoting papers: from psychoanalysis and finally he said, "Dr. Lilly, we're nothere to analyze Freud or the psychoanalytic literature; we're here to analyze you, andyou're just avoiding yourself. I learn more from you and you learn more from me thanwe'll ever get in the literature." So that's the way I've looked at everything. Wide open.

RMN: What do you think about people who suffer from a disruption of their interiorreality? People who experience problems in coming to terms: with their inner processin relation to the world around them?

JOHN: Do you know Candice Pert's work? Well, she's found fifty-two peptides in the

brain that control mood. As Pert said, "Once we understand the chemistry of the brainthere will be no use for psychoanalysis." She said that the brain is a huge, diversechemical factory. We cannot make generalizations about any one of these yet but, forinstance, if you give an overdose of this one people get depressed, if you give anoverdose of that one they get euphoria, and so on. If you OD on cocaine your brainchanges its operation, but if you're aware of this: and you pay attention you realize thatyes, it modifies some things, but it doesn't always do it in the same way. So there's thiscontinuous modulation of life versus brain chemistry. So I gave up long ago trying tofigure out how the brain works because it's so immense and so complex. We don't yetknow how thought is: connected to operations in the brain!

DJB: Do you think it would be possible to create some kind of window into the brainto see the dynamics of how thoughts arise and what their interaction is by using somekind of highly precise combination of EEG and MRI scannings?

JOHN: No. It's impossible. The Positron Emission Topography or PET scans showthe changes in various parts of the brain and of various substances. When the observedperson is learning, a compound acts one way, and then another way. But what's that?That's one compound that they're looking at. Imagine what else is going on.

DJB: Years back you helped to pioneer the original electrical brain stimulationresearch. With the understanding that you've gained in this area, do you think that itwill eventually be possible to directly stimulate brain centers without using electrodes,in order to create psychedelic experiences?

JOHN: Electrical stimulation of brains is very poor without brain electrodes and withelectrodes you wreck the brain when you put them in there. That's why I quit.

DJB: So you think then that it is possible to stimulate brain centers without usingelectrodes?

JOHN: Yes. A friend of mine at the University of Illinois showed me a set-up inwhich he was stimulating a brain at minute spots with focused ultra-sound andelectrical interference.

RMN: Do you think that men’s and women's brains operate in a very different way?

JOHN: You know, I've been researching that for years, and finally I admit that you areanother universe that I can't possibly be in because you're female and I'm male.

DJB: What directions do you think neuroscience should be taking' What are the mostimportant avenues of exploration?

JOHN: The most important things to do in science is to figure out who the human isand how he operates biochemically. We're never going to understand how the brainworks. I always say that my brain is a big palace, and I'm just a little rodent runningaround inside it. The brain owns me, I don't Own the brain. A large computer cansimulate totally a smaller computer but it cannot simulate itself, because if it did therewouldn't be anything left except the simulation. Consciousness would stop there.

DJB: Could it not be possible for human beings to create a computer system large andcomplex enough that, although it may not be able to understand itself, it would be ableto understand the human brain?

JOHN: No, because we don't know the basis for the human brain. As Von Neumannsaid, it was strictly by accident that we discovered multiplication, addition andsubtraction first. If we discovered the mathematics of the brain we'd be way ahead ofwhere we are now.

DJB: You mean the binary language?

JOHN: There's no way to tell what the hell language the brain uses. Sure, you canshow digital operations of the brain, you can analyze neural impulses traveling downyour axons, hut what are those? Well, as far as I can see they are just a recovery from asystem that's in the middle of the axon, and that's operating at the speed of light.Neuronal impulses going down the axons are just clearing up the laser points so thatit's ready for the next one, continuously. It's like sleep. Sleep is a state in which the

human biocomputer integrates and analyzes what went on the previous time it wasoutside, throws out all the memories that aren't going to be useful tomorrow and storesonly those memories which will be useful. So it's a process like a big computer inwhich you have to empty memory and start over. We do this all the time.

DJB: Along these lines, I'm wondering, do you think memories are actually stored inthe brain or do you agree with Rupert Sheldrake's theory that memories are stored ininformation fields or something similar.

JOHN: I've read some of Sheldrakes's stuff and he's too glib. He's got all explanationfor everything. The universe is much more complicated than he's trying to make it outto be. People tend to do this-I've tried to avoid it. I make fun of my own theories. I say,what I believe to be true is unbelievable, so that I don't believe in anything, you see?Temporarily I may in order to talk with somebody. Memories are stored in thefeedback with ECCO and ECCO takes care of all this. I don't know how they operate,but Sheldrake calls stuff memory which isn't memory; it's living program.

DJB: Do you think that the brain acts as a transceiver:,

JOHN: Yeah, that's right. The brain, the bio-computer is a huge transmitter/ receiverand we're just beginning to see what it is. Have you ever seen anything like a TV showon ketamine?

DJB: Yeah, with commercials even.

JOHN: Well, they're real. The first time I saw that I thought, my God, all we’re doingis increasing the sensitivity of the brain to microwaves. And the problem withmicrowaves is that they're influencing us below our level of awareness all the rime.Well, this morning for instance, on ketamine, I went into this place where all thesepeople were interacting and I got involved. When I came back I realized that I had gotinto a soap opera on TV and was taking part in it as if it were reality!

Now kids must do this all the time. Marvelous! But you got to watch out because youmay be taken in and think they're extraterrestrial or something, unless you can seesomething that cues you in that this is a TV station.

DJB: Have your experiences with ketamine and your near-death encounters influencedyour perspective on what happens to human consciousness after biological death?

JOHN: I refuse to equate my experiences with death. I think it's too easy to do that.When I was out for five days and nights on PCP, the guides took me to planets thatwere being destroyed and so on. I think ECCO made me take that PCP so they couldeducate me. And they kept hauling me around and I tried to get back hut they said,"Nope, you haven't seen all the planets yet." One was being destroyed by atomicenergy of war, one was being destroyed by a big asteroid that hit the planet, anotherone was being destroyed by biological warfare, and on and on and on. I realized thatthe universe is effectively benign; it may kill you but it will teach you something in theprocess.

DJB: Do you think that there is actually some kind of learning process that's going onas a result of ECCO's positively or negatively reinforcing certain behaviors so thathumanity's evolution is guided in certain directions?

JOHN: I had the illusion that humanity is making progress ill certain directions, yes.

DJB: Do you feel that when synchronicity happens, that it's actually being arrangedeither by ECCO or by us?

JOHN: The only place that Jung defined synchronicity at all well was in theintroduction to the I Ching, and he talks about controlling coincidences. He fell intothe same trap I did. Synchronicity doesn't mean anything; it's an explanatory principle.

RMN: Do you think that ECCO is concentrating on humans?

JOHN: Of course not! ECCO is the one that's running everything on the whole planet.

RMN: So they have no particular interest in our survival, we're just a minute part of

what's going on?

JOHN: They? You're personalizing. I used to personalize. I saw angels,extraterrestrials, then I called them guides and finally I called them ECCO and it'stotally impersonal. It's way beyond what people can understand except in a ketamineor LSD state. Then they tell you, well we're at a low level, there are influences aboveus. It would be nice to meet these entities that experience these various states. Theywon't take human form, though; it's a waste of their time. And once I joined them andrealized that that's where I came from and that I had gotten bored and become humanin order to have some different experiences with a smaller intelligence. It's likebecoming a cat or something, to find out what's going on with the cat.

RMN: I feel that my dog, Safety, might have done that very thing. She's more humanthan many people I know.

JOHN: Well a dog finally convinced me of this, that there are levels that these entitieschoose to be, dolphins or whatever. When I experienced level +3 (refer to The Centerof The Cyclone), I was part of a huge consciousness that was creating from the void. Itwas taking energy and creating a form, life and so on. It wasn't me. My ego afterwardswanted it to be me but of course it wasn't.

DJB: Do you have a hard time bringing information back?

JOHN: Oh, of course. It isn't hard to bring it back, it just doesn't come back. It's inyou, though; ECCO put me straight on that. They said, "Well, everything that’shappened is stored and when it's important that you know it, you'll know it."

RMN: When you're ready for it.

DJB: Bringing information back from my ketamine experiences is a real struggle forme.

JOHN: You've got to be more passive. If you struggle, then all you'll see is yourstruggle. It's like trying to do something instead of doing it.

DJB: Let me ask you John, how do you, or do you, distinguish between mind andbody, spirit and matter'!

JOHN: Those are all explanatory principles.

DJB: How about in terms of descriptive principles. How would you describe thedifference between them?

JOHN: Naming such things is a dichotomy. The only dichotomies are in language andin the eye of the observer. Until you can describe the system of mathematicalcontinuous process, or stepless process, then you aren't really saying anything. As Ikeep saying in every workshop I give, "For the rest of this week you are going to heara lot of stuff and all of it is bullshit." You know why? Because language itself isbullshit. It's a way of spending your time without experience or experiment.

DJB: But what other alternative do we have besides language for communication?

JOHN: Well, if you don't know, I can't explain it to you. No, I told you about it; on theketamine experiences you're going through reality experiencer; and they'reexperimenting on you and you're experimenting and there's no way that language hasanything to do with this. So what's happening is so fast and continuous that you don'thave a chance of describing it.

DJB: But don't you think it's important that people write books and map out theterritory?

JOHN: Only if they tell you, "There's a territory over there. Go see it." That's all.

DJB: What do you think of the notion that Terence McKenna talks about a lot, thatlanguage actually creates reality?

JOHN: No, it doesn't. Language creates reality? That doesn't make any sense at all.

RMN: Maybe he means that language creates our experience of reality, because itprograms us to think in certain ways.

JOHN: The experience in the tank, for example, is: a continuous paragraphic processand that's true of life in general. You can’t describe me, for instance, you can't evenremember me in your video memory, right?

RMN: I can't remember you? I haven't forgotten you yet.

JOHN: No, no. That's a simulation. You haven't forgotten your simulation of this,whatever ii is. See, I can't describe me and I can't describe you.

RMN: Right, I see that. But if somebody were to ask me about you later on, thelanguage I used to recall and describe you then would effect how I re-experienced you.

JOHN: My book The Simulations of God: The Science of Belief, explains all of this.

DJB: Explains? Isn't that the notorious explanatory principle creeping in again?

JOHN: All we do is construct simulations. I construct the simulation of you, forinstance, and I turn this into words. But that simulation is nowhere near who you reallyare. Then I tell you what my simulation of you is and you correct it, and on and on.You cannot substitute words for the action of the brain, the action of thought or theaction of mind. When I say mind I'm talking about the whole universe of stuff, see? It'snot that simple.

RMN: Why do you think we have this desire for meaning, this compulsion to explainthings all the time?

JOHN: Childishness. The circle. The explanatory principle will save you from thefear of the unknown; I prefer the unknown, I'm a student of the unexpected. MargaretHowe taught me something. I went over to St. Thomas one time and she said, "Dr.Lilly, you're always trying to make something happen. This time you're not going tomake something happen, you're going to just sit and watch." You know what I'msaying?

DJB: Yeah, I get caught in that one a lot.

JOHN: So, if I can't make something happen I get bored sometimes. But if I don't getbored and I just relax and let it happen, you show up. Now I can afford to do this, Idon't have to earn a living, but if you know how to do it you can earn a living and bepassive as hell.

DJB: What's the trick to doing that?

JOHN: You become an administrator who doesn't know anything, so people arealways explaining to you what's happening. My father was the head of a big bankingsystem; he taught me something about passivity. He said, "You must learn to be as ifyou're angry, and then you'll always be ahead of the guy who really gets angry." And Isaid, "Well, what about love?" And he said the same thing. All those powerfulemotions--you can act as if you're experiencing them, but you're not involved, you see,you haven't lost your intellectual load.

DJB: You think that if people get overwhelmed by emotion they lose their ability tothink clearly?

JOHN: Well, I had a lesson in that. I got really angry at my older brother, and I threwone of those cans that have calcium carbide in them and spark, because he was teasingme so much. He teased me an awful lot. So I threw this can at him and it missed hishead by about two inches. And suddenly I stopped and thought, "My God, I couldhave killed him! I'll never get angry again."

RMN: What do you think about America's involvement in the Gulf War and what areyour thoughts about the causes of war in general?

JOHN: Well, the Gulf War happened because Russia and the United States madepeace. So the United States Defense Department had to have something to do, becausethey have this huge budget. Luckily the Russians didn't have that huge budget as their

economy is falling apart. If our economy was falling apart then there wouldn't be anywar. As Eisenhower said, industrial establishment and the Defense Department are incontrol of this country.

RMN: Why do you think it is that politicians and national leaders so often reflect thedarker side of human nature?

JOHN: It isn't the darker side. It's the busy side. They get bored so they have to dothese things. I started a book called, Don’t Bore God or He Will Destroy YourUniverse. Nobody knows they're doing this to avoid boredom; they make otherexcuses for it. You've never been bored?

RMN: I've been bored but I don't feel like going out and bombing somebody becauseof it.

JOHN: No, no. You're not one of those people. If you took PCP you wouldn't killanybody. Sidney Cohen, who died last year, was the head of the committee of theMental Health Institute for Drug Abuse. He said, "How is it that PCP and ketaminehave similar molecules. Have you ever seen any violence with ketamine?" I said,"No." He said, "Well, with PCP we sec it all the time." I said, "Look Sidney, you'veforgotten that there's a selection of people who take PCP and a selection of people whotake ketamine. All the people that I know who take ketamine are professionals whohave respect for their own minds and brains. They’re knowledgeable and educated andthey’re not violent. But the people who take PCP are violent in the first place; peacefulpeople who take PCP don't get violent.

RMN: What do you think needs to happen before war becomes an obsolete activity?

JOHN: It won't happen. Something must make people busy together and war doesthat.

RMN: Does busy have to mean war? Are there no alternatives?

JOHN: Now Kennedy tried to make a space program. I think if we started a colony onthe moon, and then on Mars and we got sufficiently involved we could redirect all ourboredom.

RMN: Do you think that aggression is inherent in the human psyche?

JOHN: No. I once wrote a chapter called, "Where do Armies Come From?" Do youknow where: they come from? Tradition. Kids learn that history is war, so they're allpre-programmed. If you read some of the history books, it's all about war, it'sincredible! In my Latin class I learned about the wars of Caesar, when I took French Ilearned about the wars of Napoleon and on and on and on. What did we learn fromCaesar? That you don't divide Gaul into three parts. What did we learn fromCleopatra? The you may have to kill yourself with an asp. If you start reading Italianhistory and you come across Leonardo Da Vinci or Galileo then the whole thing fallsapart. They're individuals doing their thing and it's magnificent. And that's the onlypart of history that's interesting.

RMN: What do you think about the current theories of evolution?

JOHN: I looked into the paleontology of humans. Paleontology is the only science thatcould take an observation here, and a million years later another one here and draw astraight line between the two. Every time I read Leaky or Gordon Danier or any ofthose other people I look at it and say, well those are good observations but are theynecessarily connected at all? Maybe a spaceship came and put a colony in at this point.But they don't think of the obvious, you see.

I have a concept called "alternity." From here to alternity. I came back from Chile andsat in Elizabeth Campbell's living-room on acid and started evoking ECCO. Suddenlythe energy came out from above and went straight down my spine and on all sides ofme were these divisions like a pie. And I could look down this one and see a certainfuture and then right over here another future and on and on. So this was alternity thatI was sitting in. Now actually, unconsciously, we sit in alternity all the time, we haveto or you wouldn't know how to get anywhere, right? But you don't know it.

DJB: You mean sitting in a place where you see all the infinite possibilities andpathways that can emerge from a particular point in space-time?

JOHN: I don't know if it's infinite. It's sure 360 degrees and each alternative realitywas every two degrees or something like that. There were a hell of a lot of them andsome that I couldn't ever imagine.

RMN: If you were conscious of that do you think you would be able to make anydecisions to go anywhere?

JOHN: Well, I get conscious of all of them or none of them. So when I get out of mybody I don't try to program anything because there are so many alternates possible.

DJB: What are you thoughts about the future?

JOHN: What's the future?

DJB: That which hasn't happened yet. The next micro-second, the next year, the nextcentury and so on.

JOHN: We act as if there's going to be a year out there, but we haven't got there yet,right? And we think the sun is going to come up every morning and we count on that,we expect it. What's going to happen when it doesn't? One alternity is enough so whytalk about the future?

DJB: John, on a different note, do you think there is a qualitative difference betweenorganic and synthesized compounds?

JOHN: I don't know what qualitative means; I never was able to grasp that word. It'sone of the first things that they teach you in grade school and it never made any sense.My bullshit filter said it was bullshit.

We take something that a plant or animal did and we call it pure sugar or whatever.That's chemistry, the science of separating out components which you can't reduce anyfurther without destroying them. So what does the plant do:, The plant picks up carbondioxide and stuff from the ground and starts combining these compounds in certainways and synthesizes them. Plants are chemists just like us. A lot of people callsomething natural or organic hut they don't know their organic chemistry, becauseanything that has a carbon atom in it is organic, okay?

RMN: How do you define addiction and how do you avoid falling into the trap ofmisusing the chemicals you take?

JOHN: Let's see. There's drug use, drug over-use, drug abuse, drug hypo-use and onand on. There is a set of chemicals that if you take them and you don't exercise andyou don't cat right, you go downhill. When you go downhill you have to take more ofthat chemical to substitute for the food and stuff. But if you are taken off that chemicalwithout the proper stimulus you get grand mal seizures or something. That's theold-fashioned description of addiction.

What I say is, you take certain chemicals and change the chemical con~iguration inyour brain and body. This is a very interesting process and if you slay interested andlook after yourself then you can take cocaine or heroin or any of those things. Physicalexercise is absolutely essential to get good changes of conscious states. If you're ingood physical condition you can experience a hell of a lot. If you lose interest then yougo downhill and wind up in Harlem or something.

RMN: What about people who have developed a powerful physical and mentaladdiction, for example, to crack and cocaine, in some cases: even killing or stealing inorder to fulfill their craving for the drugs.

JOHN: They'll kill and steal without the drugs, they live that way. The drug just givesthem an excuse to do it. Read Freud on cocaine. He really knew what cocaine did buthe was never able to say it in the presence of the psychoanalytic people.Psychoanalysis is all based on his cocaine experiences, every bit of it.

DJB: What do you think about this whole "War on Drugs" thing?

JOHN: We've been subject to the delusion that we should suppress drugs ever sinceAnslinger put marijuana on the narcotics list ill 1937. He was enforcing the laws onalcohol and that was repealed, so he looked around for something new and foundmarijuana. In an interview with Anslinger the interviewer asked him, "What if youwere to smoke a joint?" And he said, "I would kill three people that I know." What abelief system! And he put all that in the law, you see. It's that insanity of certain peoplewho don't understand what's going on.

RMN: What do you think about atomic energy? Do you have any ideas about how wecould solve the nuclear waste problem?

JOHN: All the atomic materials should be shot into the sun. We're playing around withsomething we don't know anything about. This is the stuff of stars, it's not the stuff of aplanet. But it's there so we do it and then we get the illusion that we can control it.Well, that's bull. ECCO did something in 1942 that I'11 never forget; it threw LSD andatomic energy at us in one go. I once asked ECCO what they did that for and they said,"Well, we're trying to test out the survivability of the human species."

DJB: So you think that there are areas then that humanity shouldn't mess around with?

JOHN: Right. Well, we've proven it with atomic energy and biological warfare, too.AIDS.

DJB: You think that AIDS is the result of genetic engineering experiments gone astray?

JOHN: Yeah, you can see it. It's fooling around with biological warfare andsomething's escaped. Somebody left a sink open and it went down the sewer. LesChambers, who is head of biological warfare at Camp Detrid is an old friend of mineso I went down and talked to him about it. We went over all this and he said, "Youknow, someday, somebody's going to make a mistake, and one of those things is justgoing to go wild all over the world." He knew. AIDS is an artificial virus; it's related tothe Bovine virus, but it wouldn't affect humans before. Somebody spliced it so itwould.

DJB: You don't think AIDS could be a natural mutation?

JOHN: No. Natural mutations we can handle because we've lived here for threemillion years and the mutation rate is very slow. Our immune systems are incredible.

DJB: What role do you think science fiction plays in the development of actualscientific research?

JOHN: Well, big brains operate with science fiction and create it. What it does is freeup the creative process for a look at a simulated future which may or may not exist,but it's fun making those simulations and some of them are very good. One of myfavorites is Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke.

DJB: Are you familiar with Virtual Reality?

JOHN: I've just heard about it. I want to experience it. It shows us what we're doing allthe time--constructing realities. You change the chemistry of the brain, you change therealities. Sometimes that can get very scary. Once on ketamine I had an experiencethat scared the hell out of me, and then I realized, hey, this is happening all the time!Why should I be scared of something that's happening all the time?

DJB: What do you think about the potential of using ketamine in conjunction withpsychotherapy?

JOHN: They did it in Iran. One hundred patients. Got them all out of the hospital inone trip. They programmed in that which the patient feared most. Did I tell you whathappened to me with that? I went and looked up the Iranian reprint at the UCLAMedical Library and the Albanian one which confirmed the Iranian study.

This whole business about keying in that which is feared most stuck out. So I cameback here and took 200 mg of ketamine. Suddenly I was transported to the year 3000by ECCO and they removed my penis bloodlessly. I screamed in terror and Toni, my

late wife, came running out of the bedroom. She looked at me and said, "It's stillattached." So I looked up at the ceiling and said, "Who the hell is in charge up there?A bunch of psychotic kids? And the answer came back, "Dr. Lilly, you were at theUCLA Medical Library this afternoon and we programmed in for you that which youfeared most. It was in your unconsciousness."

RMN: What do you think is the purpose of fear?

JOHN: From Orthonoia to Metanoia through Paranoia. Orthonoia is the way mostpeople think; they're creating simulations that everyone accepts. Metanoia is whereyou leave all that and you're experiencing higher intelligence. But the first time you dothis, you're scared shitless.

On my first acid trip in the tank, I panicked. Suddenly I saw the memorandum fromthe National Institute of Mental Health: "Never Take Acid Alone." One investigatorwho tried to take acid alone got eaten up by his tape recorder. That's all I could thinkof. Luckily I was scared shitless, had no idea what was going to happen and boy, thatwas rocket fuel if ever there was one! I went further out into the universe than I've everbeen since. So the paranoia is rocket fuel to get you into Metanoia.

Before I did the tank I was frightened by water. I sailed a lot in the ocean and fearedsharks. I had a continuous phobia about this. Finally I got in the tank and went throughthat horrible experience, being frightened to death, you know. And after that I wasnever afraid of water.

DJB: Do you see a similarity between lucid dreaming and ketamine experiences?

JOHN: No. Lucid dreaming is never as powerful as ketamine.

DJB: Well, one nice thing about ketamine is that you can maintain the high for as longas you want.

JOHN: When people start talking about "higher" states of consciousness I say, "Inouter space there's no up or down."

DJB: It all becomes relative.

JOHN: No, it isn't even relative.

DJB: It isn't even relative?

JOHN: It isn't anything you can describe.

DJB: Now I'm thoroughly confused.

JOHN: If you stay around me long enough you're going to get a whole new language.Some people stay around me for a while and run away. I can't keep a woman here.They all get frightened sooner or later. I'm crazier than hell.

DJB: So are you writing these days? What are you doing?

JOHN: I never say what I'm doing. My analyst said it very well. I came in one day andflopped down on the couch and said, "I just had a new idea this morning, but I'm notgoing to talk about it." And he said, "Oh, then you understand that a new idea is likean embryo. A needle will kill an embryo, but if it's a fetus or a baby then it's just aneedle-prick." So you have to allow a certain amount of growth before you talk.

RMN: What do you think is the best therapy for people?

JOHN: The best therapy for people is to hit them over the head with a hammer.

DJB: Maybe we could start running workshops at Esalen.

JOHN: I've been hit over the head several times. We had a big hot tub out here. I stoodup too fast and the circulation left my brain and I fell face down. Three days before,Toni had read how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in The National Enquirer, andshe did it. So many people have saved my life, it's incredible. I finally figured out thatECCO doesn't want me to go yet. I asked them to let me go at times. They keep

saying, "You've got to teach, you've got to learn what it is to be a human." So, I'mspending all my time now trying to learn this. You know, it just gets to be fun. Irealized that certain humans have a lot of fun. On some day I said, "What is it to behuman?" And they said, "To laugh more."

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